714 Days... Back in Concert

6 November 2021

Earlier this month we celebrated returning to live singing with Choral Evensong for the Lord Lieutenant (27 October 2021) - 660 days after our last live performance (Choral Evensong at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, 6 January 2020). Today we were able to celebrate our return to concerts! Our last concert was on 23 November 2019 (Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem) and tonight we returned with Handel’s Messiah.

Covid has certainly had a huge impact on us over the last two years, and continues to do so. Our concert was limited in duration, so we took the difficult decision to remove all the solo alto arias, and trim a little from the other soloists and choruses. We also lost a viola player (pinged) and our concert photographer (pinged), but other than that there was good news. It was our largest audience for many years - nearing 400 in total, and we managed to get accustomed to one of our new venues (our regular venue is not yet Covid-secure for large-scale performances) in quick time.

Our Musical Director did manage to take just a couple of snaps of our soloists and wonderful continuo lead, and if you visit our Facebook page you will find panoramic photos taken from the podium of both choir and audience.

Soprano, Judit Felszeghy

Tenor, Amar Muchhala

Bass, Jack Holton

Continuo, Legend Kah-Ming Ng

Huge thanks to everyone behind the scenes who made this concert possible and worked on our Covid-19 protocols. We return to Spinney Theatre on 2 April 2022 for Carmina and think we have an ingenious solution for our patrons who found all the stairs rather challenging … watch this space!